2081 A New Life (Part 3)
Pilmo's voice disappeared and her body started to cannibalize itself, believing to be dead.
The darkness element in Salaark's voice made her tissues rot while the light element boosted the metabolism of the bacteria inside and outside the Emperor Beast, hastening the process.
"Calm down, Salaark. You can't do this." The Guardian talked to herself as her hand turned into talons that scratched her face, making her bleed. "You can't allow them to die so easily!"
Her Guardian Tier healing spell, Blood Prison, sent her life essence inside the bodies of the Awakened, bringing them back to life no matter how gruesome their injuries were.
Her Conqueror Moon armor slipped off, enveloping Kamila and treating all of her wounds. The Tyrant Sun sword, instead, circled around the room and herded the humans in one place before conjuring a defensive barrier to protect them.
With each of her heartbeats, Salaark's fury grew stronger until the feathers on her body turned into pristine white. In her rage, she was slowly reverting to her true form, that of the White Phoenix.
"I am order!" At a wave of her hand, a blinding light enveloped the Awakened from Verendi, altering their life force so that every cell in their bodies became cancerous.
Their organs bloated and deformed at a speed visible to the naked eye, quivering in pain as their frenzied metabolism consumed the old tissues to create new ones in an endless cycle.
The Awakened tried to heal themselves with Invigoration but the breathing technique found nothing wrong to fix. Their nature had been altered so deeply that they would forever know nothing but agony.
"I am entropy!" A second wave released a mass of darkness energy that killed everything they didn't need in order to survive. Non-vital organs collapsed and their limbs fell apart, turning their own blood flow into a rhythmical torture.
"I am Salaark!" A sudden burst of Origin Flames incinerated their bodies, their minds, and their mana cores at the same time.
Yet the moment their forms turned into ashes and the mana organ was on the brink of fading, the Guardian's blood activated again, saving their lives.
Blood Prison was a healing spell meant to deprive her most hated enemies of the relief of death. No matter how much harm her victims would take or what its source was, they would heal as many times as she wanted.
The drops of the Guardian's blood provided them with nutrients, life force, and even shielded their cores from extreme abuse.
Yet it did nothing to stop the pain.
"What the heck is going on?" Kamila had already recovered and from the safety of the Tyrant Sun sword and Conqueror Moon armor, she tried to make sense of the scene. "Salaa- I mean, Grandma isn't supposed to be capable of crossing the borders.
"It's an unprecedented violation of the accords between Garlen's Guardians and a war with the Desert is the last thing the Kingdom needs right now."
Jirni couldn't care less about the fate of the Awakened whereas she worried about the destiny of her family. Her brain spun at top gear, reassessing the events in order to find the answer.
"Congratulations, you are pregnant."
"I what?" Kamila had hundreds of questions, but they all had to wait.
A majestic yellow and red Warp Gate had appeared and Leegaain's human form was walking through the dimensional tunnel while Milea screamed at him from the other side, demanding for an explanation.
"Don't worry, I've come to the rescue. Everything should be fine now." He said to both Kamila and the Magic Empress.
"I feel pretty safe already." She held her womb, wishing for the first time to be a mage just to check her condition with a diagnostic spell.
"I'm not talking about you, child. I'm talking about the rest of Mogar." He pointed with his thumb at the Overlord who had now grown a set of snowy feathered wings.
Salaark knew that no matter how cruel a punishment was, a body was made to adapt and soon it would grow accustomed to it, lessening the pain. It was the reason she alternated frying the Awakened's nervous system with air magic, calcificating their flesh with earth magic, and freezing them to death with healing sessions.
She would make the pain disappear and restore their bodies to their peak, making even them experience absolute bliss before taking it all away with the next round of hexaelemental torture.
"It's said that when Guardians fight, maps get rewritten. What people are unaware of is that when Salaark is angry, entire species disappear." The albino man conjured a wall of pure strength that protected him from the living storm of the Overlord's fury.
"I don't remember reading about any extinction level event in the history books collected by the Kingdom. And some of them date millennia before Valeron." Jirni said in disbelief.
"You are welcome." Leegaain took the brunt of his fellow Guardian attacks, remaining unscathed.
He walked slowly in front of Salaark, to make sure that she didn't perceive him as an enemy before tenderly hugging her.
"Calm down, songbird. Think of the baby."
"That's exactly what I'm thinking about. Now let me go!" She snarled to break free, but opposed little real resistance. She trusted Leegaain enough to know there had to be a reason behind even such a foolish request.
"I'm talking about ours! Look at yourself." A quick spell conjured a mirror that reflected the image of someone who had little humanity left.
Salaark's skin was covered in white feathers, her limbs now ended into talons, and her mouth had started deforming into a beak.
"If you shapeshift now, the umbilical cord will be cut and our baby will die. It's too late to give them an egg. Are these guys worth it?" Leegaain asked.
Salaark's claws instinctively reached for her swollen belly, the only part of her body that she had instinctively kept human to protect the small life she was nurturing.
"No, they aren't." She said while taking deep breaths. "I'm calm now. I'm calm…
"Not!"
A sudden energy blast erupted from her body, followed by frenzied war cries. Salaark kept killing and reviving the Awakened from Verendi for several seconds while Leegaain focused on keeping the attacks from razing the Kingdom to the ground.
Once she was done, the bodies of her victims were still there but their minds were broken. The only way out they had found from that waking nightmare was madness, pulling away from reality and hiding in a corner of their own psyche.
"I can pull them out, but it will take a while." Salaark said. "In the meantime…"
A snap of her fingers Warped the Awakened to the Desert, in a maximum security facility that she had named the Pits of Agony for self-explanatory reasons.
"Shouldn't we call Lith?" Leegaain was livid having missed his turn to lash out his fury, but he put the babies' well-being first, then Salaark's, then the Empire's, and lastly, the rest of the Garlen continent. In that order.
"At this point, he deserves to know."
"Oh, fine!" The Overlord noticed Kamila clenching her own womb the same way Salaark did her own.
The Father of all Dragons opened another Warp Gate, leading to the battlefront where Lith was fighting.
